Cleopatra: A Study. Henry Houssaye
camp. On all sides were embankments, barricades, lines of earthworks; the theater had become a citadel. The Romans sustained twenty assaults without losing an inch of ground. Cæsar even succeeded in seizing the island of Pharos, which gave him the command of the great harbor.
The Egyptians imagined that victory would be theirs if, instead of a woman, they could have Ptolemy to lead them. They therefore sent word to Cæsar that they made war on him only because he kept their king a prisoner, and that as soon as he should be restored to liberty hostilities would cease. Cæsar, who knew the fickleness of the Alexandrians, yielded—he gave them back Ptolemy. As for his accustomed counsellor Pothinus, Cæsar had intercepted letters from him to Achillas, and had delivered him over to the lictors. No sooner had Ptolemy rejoined the Egyptian army than the war, far from ceasing, was renewed with increased vigor. Just then the first reënforcement, the thirty-seventh legion, reached Cæsar by sea. The war was carried on without any decided advantage till the beginning of the spring of 47 BC Then it was learned that Pelusium had been taken by assault by an army that was coming to the relief of Cæsar; it was a body of auxiliaries from Syria, led by Mithridates of Pergamos. The Egyptians, fearing to be shut in between two enemies if they remained in Alexandria to await the coming of Mithridates, marched to meet him. The first battle, which was indecisive, took place near Memphis; but, a few days later, Cæsar, who had also quitted Alexandria, succeeded in joining the troops of Mithridates and a second battle was fought. The Egyptians were broken and cut to pieces, and King Ptolemy drowned himself in the Nile. Cæsar returned with his victorious army to Alexandria, now humbled; the turbulent populace of the great city, henceforth, knowing the power of the Roman steel, received the consul with loud acclaims. Thus ended the War of Alexandria, which should rather be styled the War of Cleopatra, since this war, adding nothing to Cæsar’s fame, injurious to his interests, useless to his country, and to which he nearly sacrificed both his life and his glory, had been maintained by him for the love of Cleopatra.
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